Payoffs

WE REALLY emjoyed Jeff Kunerth's Style section article about ''reading, writing and reimbursement.'' There were some interesting thoughts in the pros and cons of giving money as a reward for good grades.We have tried to reward our children with fun family outings rather than financial payoffs.After reading this article, I believe we may be doing the right thing. I would hope there are still some youngsters who feel pride in knowing they did well -- and doing well was not just a motive to earn a few dollars.

SAN FRANCISCO — Charlie Hufnagel isn't sure whether he wants an iPhone 5 when it goes on sale Friday, but that didn't stop him from being first in line at the Apple store near Union Square. In fact, he has been there since Monday morning — after all, he's being paid for it. Huge crowds and guaranteed media coverage have spawned a subculture of enterprising opportunists piggybacking off Apple hype. With the company set to release its highly anticipated iPhone 5, dozens of people are already gathered outside high-profile stores around the country.

Rail blunder Now he tells us. Gov. Rick Scott's legal counsel, Charles Trippe, admitted this week that he gave false figures to the state Supreme Court last month when he argued that the governor had the authority to reject $2.4 billion in federal funds and kill the Orlando-to-Tampa high-speed rail project. The high court wound up ruling in Scott's favor, after at least one justice cited the bogus numbers from Trippe as persuasive. Trippe told the court that the state already had spent $110 million of the $130 million authorized by the Legislature when it approved the project in 2009.

Q: My wife and I purchased deeded timeshare about five years ago. Approximately two and a half years ago, we paid off the note to avoid the high interest rate. A couple of months ago, we received a letter from the company stating that we owed approximately $500 in closing costs for purchase stamps, tax clearance and optional title insurance. At that time, I wrote back and asked for documentation that these are valid charges and that they are not charges that we actually paid when we purchased the timeshare.

The president of Japan's largest brokerage acknowledged Thursday that his company violated the law by making payoffs to a corporate racketeer. Nomura Securities Co. has been charged with violating Japan's securities and exchange law, which bans dealings with racketeers, commonly known as sokaiya. The sokaiya typically extort money by threatening to disrupt shareholders' meetings by shouting angry questions and making embarrassing disclosures. A Finance Ministry official said the ministry has the power to cancel Nomura's license or order it to suspend some or all operations for up to six months.

BATON ROUGE, La. - Testifying without his usual what-me-worry swagger, former Gov. Edwin Edwards denied Tuesday that he took payoffs for Louisiana casino licenses and said one of his accusers turned on him because the government put the pressure on. The 72-year-old silver-haired Edwards was relaxed and confident as he took the stand in his federal racketeering trial, which began Jan. 10.

A former city alderman convicted of corruption faces a sentence of up to 170 years in prison and a $2.75 million fine. Fred Roti, 72, was found guilty Friday of accepting payoffs to support a zoning proposal. Roti was charged with extorting $7,500 from a government informant in exchange for Roti's support for a proposed zoning change. Roti retired as 1st Ward alderman after being indicted in 1990. It was the fourth conviction to result from a single FBI operation, said U.S. Attorney Fred Foreman.

Rep. Harold Ford was acquitted Friday of charges of taking payoffs from two former bankers and political allies. The Tennessee Democrat, whose U.S. District Court trial began March 1, had been charged with 18 counts of conspiracy, bank and mail fraud. Ford, 47, was accused of taking bogus loans from convicted former Tennessee bankers Jake and C.H. Butcher Jr. The congressman's two co-defendants, former Butcher lawyers Douglas Beaty and Karl Schledwitz, also were acquitted. They had been charged with conspiracy to commit fraud.

Federal prosecutors charged six Atlanta police officers with corruption Wednesday, alleging they took payoffs and pocketed cash from searches. The six officers, including a sergeant, face charges including extortion and racketeering. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said as many as 14 arrests were possible because of a four-month undercover investigation that included FBI agents posing as drug dealers. All the officers worked in patrol Zone 3, in the southeastern part of the city. Four of the six officers appeared in court Wednesday and each was released on $10,000 bond.

A City Council member critical of the Olympic marketing program has claimed the company hired to run it took unreported cash payments from vendors. At a meeting of the Public Safety Committee, Councilman Robb Pitts said employees of B.G. Swing Games Management Inc. accepted money from vendors for sidewalk space, but the funds never reached the bank account set up by the Atlanta Economic Development Corp. Pitts did not offer documentation to support his claim, and Swing president Munson Steed vehemently denied wrongdoing.

Walt Disney World 's Fantasyland expansion won't be finished this year. But much of the spending will. Walt Disney Co. President and Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger told analysts last week that "the bulk of our capital investment" in the $425 million project in the Magic Kingdom will be made by the end of the company's fiscal year, which wraps up around Sept. 30. That's about a month before the Nov. 19 start of previews for the project's biggest phase, which includes a Little Mermaid ride and a Beauty and the Beast restaurant.

For four years, Nick Ross had three nights booked. From 9 to 11 p.m., on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays, the high school basketball player and track star would head to an L.A. Fitness near his Southern California home. The court was always empty -- because it was late at night, and almost everyone else was busy with sleep or a social life, or both. There, under the tutelage of his personal trainer, Ross would participate in plyometrics and running, agility and jumping drills that served him well later, as a star high jumper for the Arizona Wildcats . "I would say I was gifted with my jumping ability," he said, "but a lot of people don't know that, in high school, it took a lot of hard work.

The Kentucky Derby is over, but the excitement at Churchill Downs might be just beginning. When the Louisville track kicks off the remaining 33 days of its spring meet on Thursday, bettors will have a shot a major payoff. Thursday's nine-race card concludes with a Super Hi-5 race with a carryover pool from Derby Day of $276,914. The carryover pool was created when no one correctly picked the first five finishers in the correct order in Saturday's Derby. That means fans get another chance in Thursday's ninth race to correctly pick the top five.

One Fruitland Park police officer resigned last week and a second was reprimanded after allegations that a confidential informant was paid to lie so that undercover officers could get a search warrant in a drug case. Fruitland Park Chief Terry Isaacs said his inquiry into the alleged payoff was complicated when written and audio records in the case vanished. Isaacs said he confronted Cpl. Chad Yeary, 31, last week about his handling of the case after the department received a tip about the alleged payoff.

In the easy-credit heydays before the housing slump, recession and global financial crisis, dozens of banks big and small jumped at the chance to lend more than $150 million to Orlando boy-band promoter Lou Pearlman. None of them knew, they say now, that the then-high-profile music mogul was running one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in Florida history, diverting money from innocent investors to pay down his loans and underwrite a lavish lifestyle. But a federal jury in Minnesota recently concluded that at least one Florida financial institution — the former Mercantile Bank — did, in fact, discover in 2005 that most of Pearlman's "wealth" was fictitious.

Rail blunder Now he tells us. Gov. Rick Scott's legal counsel, Charles Trippe, admitted this week that he gave false figures to the state Supreme Court last month when he argued that the governor had the authority to reject $2.4 billion in federal funds and kill the Orlando-to-Tampa high-speed rail project. The high court wound up ruling in Scott's favor, after at least one justice cited the bogus numbers from Trippe as persuasive. Trippe told the court that the state already had spent $110 million of the $130 million authorized by the Legislature when it approved the project in 2009.

Let's try to explain why a horse can pay one price to win at the track and an entirely different price locally via simulcasting. Many spectators were confused recently when Lea Riva paid nearly $99 to win at Laurel but only $5.80 to win locally via simulcasting from Calder.Lea Riva was a long shot in a 14-horse race at Laurel, a track that is set up to handle betting on 14 horses per race. Calder, however, is set up to handle just 12 betting entries per race, so at Calder (and locally) Lea Riva was coupled as a betting entry with the favorite, Solar Splendor, resulting in an extremely low payoff.

By Derek Catron of The Sentinel Staff (Sentinel staffer Tim Povtak contributed to this report.), July 30, 1988

An investigation into alleged drug use by student-athletes at the University of Florida was expanded Friday to include allegations that basketball coaches made cash payoffs to players.Former Florida guard Andrew Moten was one of three players who told the Palm Beach Post they were given cash by either associate head coach Monte Towe or assistant coach Kenny McCraney.''Every now and then, they the coaches gave me money,'' Moten said. ''Not very much, but a little bit. Tens and twenties.''Tony Williams, a junior college transfer who was dismissed from the team before the Southeastern Conference basketball tournament in March, told the Post he received about $200 while he was on the team.

Could paper and crayons at 3 mean nuclear physicist at 30? Encouraging creativity in your children preps them for a lot more than future artistic pursuits, says Whitney Ferre, author of "33 Things to Know About Raising Creative Kids" (Turner). It preps them for life. "Creativity is confidence in your ability to create change — at work, in your personal life, at home," Ferre says. "It's having a challenge in life and thinking, 'OK, here's what I've got at my disposal.

Author Jeff Bredenberg has made a habit of writing books that help homeowners cut corners. His latest is "How to Cheat at Gardening and Yard Work" (Rodale, $18.95), another of his "How to Cheat" series. This one offers "shameless tricks" to help gardeners stop and smell the roses rather than pruning and watering them constantly. "We end up spending too much time and money on certain things we do around the house, and gardening is definitely one of those," Bredenberg said. "I like to give very specific advice that will help people get radical about this and ... find they have the power to peel that complexity out of their lives--and get their lives back."